Flasher!
Oct 18 '01
The Bottom Line At last - a socially acceptable way to be a flasher!
Wow! I just noticed how much I shoot my "mouth" (fingers? keyboard?) off about motorcycles - especially for a newbie. But everyone is so kind and gracious to my reviews, it's very encouraging. Please attribute it to the fanaticism of a new convert to a religion - and as so many have said before me, motorcycling is, indeed, much like a religion.
The learning curve in motorcyling is amazing, and I feel like a completely different person than the one who first straddled her own bike on August 9, 2001, 6,000 miles ago.
Anyway, I had not yet learned about this when I was writing earlier about how to be seen. But it's been proving itself quite useful, so I thought I'd pass it on to all the other newbies.
First, some stuff we all probably already know about how people see:
1) The eye is attracted to motion.
2) An object moving straight toward or away from the eye often does not appear to be moving.
3) If the object is changing in appearance, it is more likely to appear to be moving.
4) Variation in brightness can be percieved as motion.
What does this translate to? Flash your headlamp from high to low when you have oncoming traffic.
OSCILATING HEADLAMPS
OK, so I know there are bikes (and aftermarket add-ons) with a switch setting that allows you to have your headlamp oscillating from bright to dim and back. My own personal opinion as a cage driver, I like them for daytime highway driving. They catch my attention and let me notice the bike a long way away.
I don't like oscillating headlamps at dusk or at night. Then I find them annoying and distracting. They tend to make me "target fixate" (get so focused on what you are trying to avoid that you smack into it). I also don't see how a person could see to drive the bike with a flickering headlamp.
I also don't care for the oscillating headlamps in town because, again, of the distraction factor. There is so much flickering little stuff in town that the bike becomes LESS visible to me than if the headlamp was steady.
"FLASHING" YOUR HEADLAMPS
I've been using the time it takes oncoming drivers to switch from their high beams to their lows as a rough guage of how quickly they conciously notice me.
The highways I travel have a lot of gentle rolling sections where I can see the glow of a car before I actually see the vehicle. When I switch my headlamp to low BEFORE seeing the car, the drivers often leave their headlamps on high, and when/if they do notice me they sometimes look startled.
If I wait until I actually SEE the car before switching to my low, the driver generally will immediately also switch to low and drift his/her car slightly farther away from me.
This also works in the day time. If there is a long stretch where I don't see any cars, that probably means the person driving toward me also hasn't seen any - and may be dreaming off a bit. Flashing my headlamp seems to "wake up" the person. It also is useful if you notice the car drifting toward your lane.
I have friends who like to put louder horns on their bikes because they feel it is more attention-grabbing. Well, maybe in town. My personal feeling is that it is better to gently remind folks that you are on the road well ahead of time so they can wake up and respond appropriately, than it is to wait until the last minute and startle them with a loud "BLAAAAAP!" It would take a pretty loud horn to be heard at the same distance the average headlamp can be seen.
E nihi ka hele, mai ho`opa`a!
Hula Rider
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Epinions.com ID:
hularider
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Member: Leilehua Yuen
Location: Hilo, Hawaii, USA
Reviews written: 69
Trusted by: 8 members
About Me:
HulaRider is an author, artist, and educator who specializes in Hawaiian culture and arts.
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